


Shots in Middle Earth, feat. MoD Harry

by Kaylio



Series: One-shots, Snippets, And General Plot-Dumping Grounds [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crossover, Gen, Magitech!, Master of Death Harry Potter, Plot-Bunny Dumping Ground, inconsistent updates, lotsa one-shots
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-01
Updated: 2016-03-07
Packaged: 2018-05-24 02:24:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6138154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kaylio/pseuds/Kaylio
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Random stuff that got written but isn't likely to get continued, or got written and is complete in itself, or got written and then the muse upped and left. Mostly AU, might have crack and time travel and all the other non-canon-y bits.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Other Friend

**Author's Note:**

> Written over a day, so the quality kinda devolves a little bit as the day went on. Oh well. This didn't turn how I'd thought it would, and isn't quite my usual thing. Not much HPness, but I just wanted to write something with mad-scientist-ish-wizard.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where Gandalf saw Beorn being bear and was like "let's try someone else."

"Hm," said Gandalf, as a terrible roar rang throughout the forest. "I do not think our host is in the best mood today." 

"Our host?" Bilbo repeated. "That is our host?"

No one answered him. All was watching Gandalf, who was looking contemplatively into the distance. 

"I know another place where we can stop for a while, though it would take a slight detour of a day's walk, at most," he said at last. 

Thorin glared. "We must be at the hidden gate by Durin's Day, and summer is almost over. We do not have the leisure of a detour." 

"If you earned the favour of our new host, he can take a week off our journey. It is well worth the effort if—if—you have impressed him enough." 

Thorin faltered. "A week? Are you sure?" 

"Very," said Gandalf firmly. "Though I must warn you, our host is difficult to please and rather... eccentric." 

Bilbo noted the oddity of Gandalf calling someone else 'eccentric', and felt a tingle of something not quite foreboding travel up his spine. 

Another loud roar, full of animalistic rage and untameable strength. It seemed to have made up Thorin's mind. Certainly, if Bilbo had to choose between certain death at the jaws of a wild beast and impressing an odd individual, he'd pick the latter. All the time. Without fail. Had he mentioned that the roar sounded closer now? 

"Then we simply have to do our best to impress your friend. Let's go." 

 

Bilbo looked around. Then he looked around again. 

"Just to clarify," he said to Bofur, "Gandalf said that his acquaintance lives here. ‘Here' being this field. Which is empty." 

"Aye," said Bofur. "That's what he said." 

"Good, because for a moment, I thought we were trying to find a nonexistent house in this wide, open, empty field." 

"Perhaps his friend lives underground," Bofur replied, tapping his foot on the ground. "It is sometimes safer underground than above it." 

A little way off in the distance, Gandalf gave a triumphant "Aha!"

Then the wide, open, empty field stopped being wide, open, and empty. In fact, it stopped being a field entirely. 

"What in the name of Mahal?”

A steep cliff greeted them, blocking out the sun before them and casting an ominous shadow over the group. Jagged grey ledges protruded towards them. A poor, withered looking plant clung to the rock face, its vines blackened and twisted. 

Bilbo leaned back to look, but the cliff seemed to have no limits on either side, as if it stretched outwards from the Misty Mountains and ended in the Blue Mountains. It seemed more fitting as a lair of some dark thing than the home of anyone friendly. 

"This friend wouldn't happen to be an evil sorcerer, would he?" Oin asked timidly. 

"Nonsense," said Gandalf distractedly, tapping his staff against a small indent in the cliff-face. "He is no more evil than… Well, he can be extraordinarily pleasant if he wished." 

Smooth stone parted, defying the laws of nature to slide in on itself to reveal a doorway. Bilbo peeked in, and saw that it was a passageway, lit by a soft light from some inner room. 

"What devilry is this?" Thorin muttered, silenced by a look from Gandalf. 

"Reviaur is a unique individual, and he may not have had company for some time. I bid you not to take offence at his words. He is, however, trustworthy. All your secrets will be well-kept.” Here, the wizard looked meaningfully at Thorin, who huffed and turned away to face the tunnel. 

"Good," said Gandalf jovially. "Now we enter.” 

Bilbo saw the dwarves look uncertainly among themselves and hesitated. A second later, he told himself off for being foolish. This was Gandalf. He wouldn't lead them wrong (on purpose, at least) (though he had been known to vanish for stretches of time, particularly when having a wizard around would have been really useful) (but he always did appear at the right time to rescue them, so that was alright, he supposed). 

Gandalf was already heading in, the soft tap tap of his staff echoing in the tunnel. Bilbo hurried behind him, marvelling at the smooth, metallic walls beside them and the bright stripes that illuminated the passage. 

Slowly, the dwarves followed, their words softening into a low rumble that was drowned by the sound of their footsteps. 

Bilbo's stomach growled, and despite himself, he hoped that their host might have plenty of food. 

Hobbit hunger pains were nothing to sniff at. 

While he was at it, a bed that was not earth or tree roots sounded fantastic too. He meant it when he said he would help the dwarves take back their home if he could, but there were times when he just wished that questing wasn’t quite so… uncomfortable. Bilbo loved the earth as much as the next hobbit, but he also loved freshly cooked meals as much as the next hobbit, and it’s been a while since the company had something that wasn’t game or soup or cram. 

Gandalf paused, and Bilbo stopped next to him. They had emerged into a large, well-lit chamber with spotless white walls. The room was devoid of any furnishings—actually, it was devoid of everything. Bilbo couldn’t imagine why anyone would have such a room filled with nothing, and then tried to see where the lights were coming from, only to find that there didn’t seem to have any. There were no torches, no lamps. Just walls of white. 

Then a blur shot out from somewhere, and stopped in front of them. 

Bilbo stared at the… thing. It had the shape of a deer, but that was where all similarities ended. Normal deers had fur, had hooves and eyes and softness. This one had bronze coverings, had cogs and sharp angles and bright blue-lit eyes. 

"Who daresss ssenter–“

He jumped at the sudden voice. Someone at the back swore. The voice coughed and cleared its throat. “Sorry. Wait. Grey, that you?" 

Bilbo blinked and looked up into an upside down face. A boy—a mannish boy of twenty years—was crouched on a ledge above their heads. Gandalf turned around. 

“Yes, it’s me. Greetings, Reviaur!” 

This was their host? Bilbo could hear the others mutter their surprise, and tried not to stare at the boy. Reviaur dipped his head and jumped off the ledge, landing silently before the group. The deer-thing vanished off to who-knows-where, and so it was just them and Reviaur. 

“Hullo,” he said, a strange smile on his face as he surveyed the group. 

The group stared back unabashedly (though given that all but one of them were dwarves, it could be argued that shyness actively avoided them). 

Reviaur looked unassuming. If Bilbo had encountered him in the Prancing Pony, the hobbit wouldn't have paid him much attention. He wasn't like Gandalf, who seemed to carry an air of wisdom and quiet dignity wherever he went. Then startlingly green eyes met Bilbo's own, and everything ceased to matter. 

“Grey?” 

The weight of the world was on him. Stars fizzled out of existence. There was something flitting in the green depths, and Bilbo felt drawn to it, following it deeper and deeper, caught in the gaze of eternity.

“Yes?” 

“Who is this and why do I feel compelled to claim the ring in his pocket?” 

The eyes turned away. Bilbo blinked. 

“Bilbo.” 

The hobbit looked up at Gandalf. “Yes?” 

“Take out the ring in your pocket.” 

Bilbo reached up to his waistcoat pocket, then stopped. 

“Why?” He heard himself asking. “It’s just a trinket.” 

“We only wish to have a look at it,” Gandalf said, leaning on his staff. His eyes were on Bilbo too, but Bilbo felt hardly felt it. Nothing could ever match up to that look. “Only for a little bit.” 

His fingers were in his pocket now, nearly touching the gold band. Abruptly, Bilbo drew his hand back. “It’s not important,” he said, trying to smile and not feel cornered. “Surely we have better things to do?” 

Thorin gave his agreement. “If you’d like a ring as payment for your hospitality,” he said to Reviaur, “we have ones more valuable than whatever the burglar has.” 

“Oh no,” said Reviaur, and his face was shuttered now. “I think I recognise this one, and if I’m right, there’s little that’s more valuable. Bilbo Baggins take out the Ring from your pocket.” 

Before he knew what he was doing, Bilbo was holding out the ring he had found in the goblin caves. 

The dwarves clustered beside him, giving it curious looks. Gandalf’s focus, on the other hand, was elsewhere entirely. 

“Impromptu history lesson,” said Reviaur, who had taken a step back. The …being gestured at the ring. “This is the Ring of the Great Git. Being a great git, I suppose he tied much of his power to it. As if doing so has ever turned out well for anyone involved.” 

The last bit was said derisively, dismissively. It was a very abysmal history lesson, if it could even be called a lesson. Who’s the great git? 

Reviaur turned to Gandalf. “Dol Guldur, right? Don’t bother with that place. Just take that,” he nodded towards Bilbo, “and chuck it in the volcano. Sooner you do it the better, I reckon.” 

Gandalf looked back at the company, then at Bilbo, who put the ring back in his pocket. 

“Don’t know why you’re coming here about it,” said Reviaur, turning away. “I thought there’d be some books on that thing in river-valley. Anyway, you lot can start questing there now. I think the volcano’s some 800 miles south-west, but you might want to check a map.” 

Then he made to leave, as if everything was settled. 

“Actually, Reviaur,” Gandalf said slowly. “That’s not why we are here for.” 

The other man stopped to glance back, and Gandalf continued. “You see, a dragon has taken over Erebor—that is, a dwarven city east of here—and we are going to take the city back.”


	2. The Wizard And The Robot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Aragorn did not, in fact, survive the tumble off the cliff, except that he did.

Aragorn opened his eyes. The room was bright, but his eyes quickly adjusted to it without having to blink. He was, presumably, lying on a bed. The fibres of the sheet was smooth beneath his fingers, finer than almost everything else he had felt.

Someone made a delighted noise, and he turned his head towards it. ‘It’ was a man, just out of his youth, dressed in peculiar robes of black and blue.

“It worked,” said the man, clapping his hands. “Nearly thought I’d lost you in the middle, actually.”

“Where am I?” Aragorn asked, slowly sitting up. “Who are you, good stranger? What day is it?”

His head was spinning. He could think clearly, but there was just so much thoughts going on in his mind that Aragorn closed his eyes and forced himself to be calm.

“You are in my tent, I am—” the man broke off. “You may call me Harald, I suppose, and I have absolutely no idea what day it is.”

Aragorn opened his eyes again. He could not be in a tent. The room was large, roughly the size of his lodging in Rivendell, and there was a door to his left. Tents did not have doors, were not so spacious, and definitely not so bright. There were only so many torches you could put on a wall, and even they can’t illuminate the room as brightly as this was.

“You are quite fortunate I found you,” Harald continued, “but you must thank your own luck too. I doubt I could have kept your essence in tact if you had been dead. As it is, I think I put you together alright, but there’s no guarantee. Still, I make very little mistakes, so perhaps you’ll turn out fine anyway.”

“Put me together?” Aragorn repeated numbly. He could recall the battle now—the warg-rider, the warg, his back burning as the creature pulled him along. He remembered a dreadful pain in his shoulder as the warg tumbled onto something and loosened the strap, then gushing cold and pain and a sudden certainty that he was going to die.

Harald looked shifty, and Aragorn narrowed his eyes. Carefully, he examined himself. His shoulder and arms were completely healed. There was no sign of the swelling or the scrapes that would have resulted from his tumble. His scars were gone. The one across his knuckle, from a tree when he was younger. The many on his fingers, where the eagle he had kept had nipped him. The others on his arms, caused by fighting and various incidences through the years. Aragorn felt his side. There, too, the skin was smooth and clear, without a sign of the stitches that had occupied it.

Now that he thought about it, his throat and mouth had felt none of the usual dryness after a period of unconsciousness.

“What did you do to me?” Aragorn stood up, his new garment falling lightly down his arms.

Harald blinked at him, and Aragorn stared unblinkingly at those green eyes.

“You were just about dead when I found you,” said the man. “I couldn’t heal your body, so I moved your consciousness into another body I’d built a while back. Think robot.”

“What is a—” Before Aragorn could finish, he realised that he already knew the answer. Information he had never known, had never heard about, was appearing in his mind.

“Why do I not look metal?” He asked instead, keeping a tight hold on his panic.

“Because I know what people are like,” Harald shrugged. “I didn’t save your life so you could spend the rest of it worrying about how you’re a monster or something. Dysmorphia isn’t my intention, and I can do a skin thing, so…”

He gestured at Aragorn. “Congratulations, you’re now nearly indestructible. If you don’t go near volcanoes or me, you can live up to a few hundred thousand years, give—not take—another few thousand.”

Aragorn sat down. He didn’t know how he was still maintaining this calm, but the only thing he could think of, was _now Arwen don’t have to choose_ , which was shortly followed by  _I'm technically unhurt so Elrond can't throttle me._

He’ll grasp onto this little bit of near-normalcy until everything made more sense.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I might try for a crackier version of this someday XP

**Author's Note:**

> It isn't quite mad-scientist-ish-wizard, but eh. CLOSE 'NUFF. Reviaur as a name came from one of my other fics, and I was a tad too lazy to make up another one. Didn't have the Sindarin-Quenya dictionary handy when I was writing it.


End file.
